


carrot cake and gold

by T_5Seconds



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Compliant, can be read as platonic or romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27456388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/T_5Seconds/pseuds/T_5Seconds
Summary: Rather than start Ragnarok, Valkyrie binds Hela to the planet with her, alone, forever.Guess they're stuck here now.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Hela (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Hela (Marvel)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	carrot cake and gold

They don't have a plan.

Hela is an imminent threat, the people of Asgard are in need of help so desperately. Scrapper 142- No, she's Valkyrie now- doesn't protest when Thor sets course for Asgard.

They have no plan, and they have no time, and it's going to have to do.

\---

Thor rushes to face his sister, and Loki helps Valkyrie sneak into the palace to look for a solution.

They're reading books so fast the pages are all blurring together, and thunder booms outside. There's no time.

Loki makes a noise of victory. He shoves the page in her face.

A spell. To bind, it says. To bind someone to a single realm, forever.

They'd need to abandon Asgard, but Hela would be trapped here.

There's only one issue.

The spell will also bind the caster.

Loki volunteers himself, but Valkyrie disagrees. She's not going to trust him with this.

This is her fight. She can pull off one measly spell.

\---

Loki tells Thor they have a plan, and the people run to the ships.

Valkyrie remains, armed with her sword, her armor, and a book.

For her fallen sisters.

For Asgard.

She starts reciting the spell the instant Hela is close enough to be in range. She can see the moment realization dawns- Hela screams like a wounded cat and starts sprinting at her.

She can hear the ship rising behind her, getting away. Escaping. Without her.

She finishes reciting the spell, and her feet are anchored to the floor.

The book warned of this effect.

Hela stops, frozen herself, about ten feet away.

They're stuck here, now, for better or for worse.

Hela stares, baleful, and says nothing.

Valkyrie, for all she expected to feel victorious, to gloat, says nothing.

They have both lost.

\---

Two days later, Hela opens her mouth.

"I remember you."

"I'm... flattered."

They both sound dry, and speaking hurts Valkyrie's throat. It's probably because she hadn't drank anything in days. Not even water.

"Why did you bind yourself here? With me?"

Valkyrie doesn't answer that one. She's not so sure herself.

\---

Another day passes in silence, and Valkyrie's feet finally unstick themselves from the floor.

It seems Hela's do too.

The Goddess Of Death stands like a newborn deer, legs wobbling.

Valkyrie laughs at her, a short bark, but makes no attempts to stand herself. She's not going to show weakness.

Hela shoots her a glare full of venom, but makes no move to attack.

She wobbles her way back to the city, and Valkyrie stays sitting on the Bifrost, ignoring the heartbroken screaming that begins shortly after.

She can't feel pity for Hela. It's too late now.

\---

Valkyrie does, eventually, get up. She walks her way to a river and drinks.

It's no substitute for alcohol, but it soothes her throat.

She goes into town. There are black swords sticking out of half the buildings. A statue has been minced into neat cubes.

Hela is nowhere to be seen, but Valkyrie can fill in the blanks.

There's no point, she reminds herself, in pitying the woman. She deserves this.

Valkyrie leaves, heading towards the palace. She doesn't want to stay here.

\---

Valkyrie stumbles upon a bakery, left abandoned. There's buns in the oven, bread on display, a bag of frosting half-filled.

It's all stale by now. Valkyrie eats everything.

\---

She reaches the steps of the palace, and pauses to take in all the gold.

She remembers this gold. They brought it to Asgard caked in blood.

Hela, barely a teenager, had smiled when her father praised her.

It was the first time he'd praised her in public. In secret, some whispered it was the first time he'd praised her at all.

\---

Valkyrie steps into the palace, once a bustling center of life, and sees only dust.

Odin would be appalled. His pride, his home, his gold, all left unattended.

It's useless now. Valkyrie kicks a vase worth more than a house and watches it roll away.

The throne room is in the worst state of disrepair. The mural on the ceiling proudly displays blood and war, while the one broken on the ground is of peace.

For all she hates it, Valkyrie finds that she prefers this room to how it was before.

The uncomfortable truth is better exposed.

\---

She walks into the library, simply wandering, and finds Hela rooting through books in the history section.

She looks over at Valkyrie, raises an eyebrow, and goes back to shuffling through books.

She's not wearing her armor. Instead, it looks to be a loose cotton shirt often worn for sleep and a pair of soft pants about two sizes too big.

Her hair is tucked behind her ears, and she's not wearing any of her makeup.

Valkyrie takes a random book off the nearest shelf and walks to the furthest corner of the library.

\---

She finishes the book- some bullshit story about how the Asgardian people were peaceful and Jotunheim was evil- and goes to grab another.

Hela is sitting at one of the tables, reading a truly enormous tome about the history of Asgard. While Valkyrie goes through the sections, Hela cries out and hurls her book across the room.

"What, didn't like hearing about goat farmers?"

Hela chokes out a laugh.

"It doesn't mention me. Me, or my wars, or our conquests. Every battle I fought in is now a peace treaty. Every invasion I began is now self-defense. What, could Father not bear to acknowledge me? Was I nothing?"

She drops her head onto the table. Valley takes the book Hela was reading and leaves her be.

\---

She doesn't like agreeing with Hela, but that book was terrible.

The Valkyries are reduced to an ornamental group- powerful, sure, but ultimately useless. They contribute nothing, and in the end die mysteriously.

The Valkyries did a lot more than that. The Valkyries were a force of nature, a terrifying army, the personal fighters of the King.

She can remember the screaming. 

She can remember the realization that they were wrong- and the subsequent knowledge that it was too late to stop.

The Valkyries were Hela's attendants. Maybe even her friends.

They brought back a lot of gold.

\---

She walks back to where Hela is sitting, drops the now-finished book on the table, and taps her arm for attention.

"What?"

"There's a statue of Odin nearby. Enourmous, golden, all that. He was really proud of it."

She unsheathes her sword and buries it in the table.

"Wanna go fuck it up?"

Hela looks at her, a woman once so alive, now so frail. What happened to her?

A bit of that old fire reignites in her eyes.

"I thought you'd never ask."

\---

By the time they're done with it, the statue looks less like Odin and more like shit. Good. More accurate that way.

"Have you seriously been wearing your armor all this time?"

"It's in memory of my sisters. You know, the ones you killed."

Hela pauses, like she's not sure what to say. An odd expression crosses her face.

"Well, if you change your mind, Loki's room has several wardrobe's worth of clothes. Mother's room, too."

So that's where Hela got her new outfit.

Valkyrie misses her sisters, but this armor is beginning to smell.

\---

She dresses in actual clothes, not Hela's sleepwear. A long white shirt, black leather pants, white boots and a blue sash she pilfered from Loki's frankly ridiculous collection.

She washes the armor by hand, shoves it into a bag, and leaves it in a hidden compartment in the Prince's closet. He has a lot of them.

She goes back to the library, where Hela is reading history again.

"Why do you want to read it so much, if it keeps pissing you off?"

Hela makes no comment on her change of clothes.

"I want to know what I missed."

Valkyrie can't argue with that. She goes through the shelves, finds a recount of the last five hundred years, and sits to read it.

About twenty pages in, Hela starts reading over her shoulder. Valkyrie doesn't comment.

\---

They've been reading for days when Valkyrie abruptly snaps her book shut.

"What is it?"

"I'm hungry. Where are the kitchens?"

Hela leads her through the maze of gold and paintings, ending in a room that is shockingly devoid of grandeur.

Some of the food has perished, but most of it is still in magical stasis containers.

Valkyrie cooks scrambled eggs for her sworn enemy and they eat them together.

\---

"I'm bored."

"We've been reading for a while, yeah."

Hela pauses, seemingly thinking.

"Do you think the horses are still in the stables?"

The stables run on magic- food and water are delivered and waste is removed periodically.

The horses are in fact still in the stables.

Valkyrie considers leaving them, but in the end she can't imagine what they would need horses for.

"Do you want to go riding?"

"Sure. Want to let 'em all out? We can't possibly need all these horses."

Hela gets on a black horse, strong and royal. Valkyrie nearly mounts a white one, but changes her mind and goes for a cream racehorse instead.

They let all the horses out of the stalls. Some of them bolt straight away, some are a bit slower, and a few do nothing.

Valkyrie's horse beats Hela in the ensuing race, but her horse is panting hard. Hela's is slow, but steady.

They ride for hours, only turning around when the sun starts to dip.

Valkyrie walks with Hela back towards the palace- and then pauses when they reach a farm, about a twenty minute ride from the city and an hour walk.

"Why do we want to go back to the palace, anyway?"

Hela struggles for an answer.

They leave their horses in the fields and go into the small house. It's quiet, humble. There's no gold.

Valkyrie sleeps soundly.

\---

The horses are still there in the morning, so they ride back into town.

Hela finds a clothing shop, which they ransack. There's armor, too, which they take.

A bookshop full of fantasy novels set in other realms.

There's a store full of gardening tools. Valkyrie takes all of them.

They tie their haul to the horses, but stop at one last store on their way out.

It's home decor. There's soft couches and impractical bookshelves and fancy curtains. They pick and choose, but the only real debate is what to paint the walls.

They end up deciding to paint every room a different colour.

\---

Valkyrie wakes with the sun, goes outside, and starts harvesting carrots.

Hela finds her there, nearly three hours later, and simply sits down to help.

"What are we going to do with all these carrots?"

There's a cookbook in the house. They make carrot cake, and carrot soup, and carrot pudding.

Hela is covered in flour. Valkyrie's not much better.

She looks down at her shirt, once white, now stained a very recognizable carrot orange, and finds she doesn't really mind.

\---

Hela shakes her awake.

"It's a meteor shower tonight. Come along, come on, we can't miss it."

Valkyrie watches a meteor shower with Hela in her pajamas.

"I don't think I remember my name."

Hela pauses, eyes inexplicably wet, and says "I do."

"What was it?"

"Brunnhilde."

"That's a nice name."

"It suits you."

"Do you think I could use it again?"

"I don't see why not."

Brunnhilde finishes watching the meteor shower as the sun rises.

She turns to Hela.

"Come on, we've got to finish all that carrot cake."

Hela snorts, an undignified sound that the Queen Of Asgard wouldn't be caught dead making.

"I don't think we'll ever finish all that carrot cake."

"We've got to try, haven't we?"

Brunnhilde stands, offering Hela her hand. Hela takes it.

"I suppose we do."

**Author's Note:**

> *aggressively has rarepairs in your general direction*
> 
> (Thor will come back, eventually, and he will be very confused)


End file.
